Advertisers, media producers, educators and other relevant parties have long desired to understand the responses their targets—customers, clients and pupils—have to their particular stimulus in order to tailor their information or media instances to better suit the needs of these targets and/or to increase the effectiveness of the media instance created. A key to making a high performing media instance is to make sure that every event in the media instance elicits the desired responses from the viewers, not responses very different from what the creator of the media instance expected. The media instance herein can be but is not limited to, a video, an advertisement clip, a movie, a computer application, a printed media (e.g., a magazine), a video game, a website, an online advertisement, a recorded video, a live performance, a debate, and other types of media instance from which a viewer can learn information or be emotionally impacted.
It is well established that physiological response is a valid measurement for viewers' changes in emotions and an effective media instance that connects with its audience/viewers is able to elicit the desired physiological responses from the viewers. Every media instance may have its key events/moments—moments which, if they do not evoke the intended physiological responses from the viewers, the effectiveness of the media instance may suffer significantly. For a non-limiting example, if an ad is intended to engage the viewers by making them laugh, but the viewers do not find a 2-second-long punch-line funny, such negative responses to this small piece of the ad may drive the overall reaction to the ad. Although survey questions such as “do you like this ad or not” have long been used to gather viewers' subjective reactions to a media instance, they are unable to provide more insight into why and what have caused the viewers reacted in the way they did.